The 500 pound man sat at the table in a rickety armchair and stared at the pile of glistening cellophane loveliness set before his weeping, fat encysted eyes. Twinkies, Ho-Ho�s, Ring Dings, and the lesser treats of that corporate whore Little Debbie gleamed in the light cast by a single 40-watt bulb suspended in mid-air from a dust covered brown electrical cord.
"I�ve endured the merciless probes of a thousand bleached-white aliens," he said, casting a heaving sigh into the abyss. And why do they call them duck-billed platypuses?" his companion demanded. "There ain't no other kind of platypuses." The companion was huge and oily and smelt of old mushrooms and taffy. He had laser beam eyes.
The man detonated a tremendous fart and dove into the pile, his greasy quick fingers stuffing the treats into a heavily muscled throat that pulsed like a termite mama in her sickly dark hole. His finger bones broke and splintered as the rapid fire shoveling reached a frenzied crescendo�his nose holes vomited white streams of vanilla cr�me.
An ancient Philco radio with a broken antenna and cigarette burns on its grey, plastic top blared a thin version of "Pretty as you feel" by the Jefferson Airplane.
The man's flabby heart seized itself and took a dive. His massive head hit the table with a thud and broken nose blood sprayed the empty wrappers which leapt and flew in short arcs, drifting down again to the table top.
His companion pointed a stubby finger at the one remaining Twinkie. "You gonna eat that?"
© 2002 by Craig Snyder